


after the thrill is gone

by BlindSwandive



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (Brief mention but be warned), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Animal Death, Dark, Dean Winchester Whump, Gen, I'm really sorry guys, Only twist that trope TF around, POV Alternating, Poverty, References to eating disorders, Sam Winchester Whump, Sam gets out but it goes wrong, Self-Harming Sam Winchester, Twisted Tropes: Dark Roast, flagstaff AZ, hunger
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 04:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18328811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindSwandive/pseuds/BlindSwandive
Summary: Sam ran away in Flagstaff when he was 13, desperate for freedom from his father and the hunting life.  And he got it.  Unfortunately, there's a lot that can go wrong for a teen completely alone in the world.Written for theTwisted Tropes: Dark Roast challenge(subverting the coffee shop AU trope):   Original prompt (mine)here.





	after the thrill is gone

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please, please heed the warnings. This story is not happy; it is not even particularly hopeful. It is the anti-meetcute, what's left when you take away or invert everything that fluffs the fluff.
> 
> Story and chapter titles are from the Eagles' "After the Thrill is Gone." Wonderful betas from AmberDreams and TheMegalosaurus. Feedback is love.

Dean Winchester was seventeen years old when his baby brother disappeared into the night.

Dad had been on a case, hunting down coyote-shaped skinwalkers through the red-rock desert of Northern Arizona, and in the face of that threat, Sam--thirteen, doe-eyed and skinny--had disappeared into the rock and sand and pinyon pines, and Dean had been beside himself.

Dean searched the area on foot during the day, called hospitals and police stations and bus stations with Sam's description. In the dark, he had nightmares of Sam with his throat torn out under the jaws of a coyote, bleeding out into adobe-colored sand.

Dean went slightly mad.

When John Winchester returned, tired and blood-splattered and slightly concussed, Dean had spilled all in an embarrassingly tear-filled and snot-covered confessional, and John had beat him senseless on the spot. Dean hadn't resisted, just hunkered down into a smaller and smaller ball of boy, hoping the pain and the bruising over his skin would somehow grind away enough layers that some detail he'd forgotten would be uncovered, some hint at how to find Sam revealed to his terrified eyes.

It hadn't been the case.

They'd stayed, plying the locals with booze and money and hopeless prayer, for almost two weeks. School would be starting up again soon.

But then crop-failures had emerged in Iowa, and, hollow-eyed and sour, John and Dean had piled back into the Impala and crossed state lines, hopeless and a little more dead inside than they'd been when they'd crossed the border into Hopi land. They had been three instead of two, then. 

It was more than a year before Dean's traditional monthly desperate-and-drunken mid-afternoon search on a library computer turned up a Sam--Sam Colt, it said, fourteen-years old--in the Flagstaff area, breaking into the local tribune for leading his high school's STEM team to victory at the regional championships. He was on the debate team, the basketball team, and the Math Olympiad, too, according to the paper. Dean had paid two dimes to print the article out on paper, folded it up in his pocket, and didn't breathe a word of it to his father. 

_Sam wasn't dead,_ Dean thought, dizzy with the thrill and relief. _Sam was alive and breaking local records for standardized tests and he was alive, alive, alive. Sam was alive!_

Dean had sworn to himself he'd take the soonest opportunity to go find and collect his brother--alive, in spite of all odds--and bring him home. The conquering hero.

But then they'd spent Christmas under a foot of snow in Binghamton, Sam and his fellow mathletes had gone regional, and by the time the snow had cleared, Dean had spent too long thinking about it. 

Sam was alive. And if Sam was alive, thriving out in the warm desert, living under an assumed name--then what were the chances he'd really been kidnapped or forced to flee from monsters or just gotten lost? If he'd been there, right under their noses, evading them for weeks, and there had been no note, no attempt to call or contact them, no word left even with Bobby or Pastor Jim... what could Dean possibly believe other than that Sam had left on his own, and on purpose?

Sam was alive. And what was more, Sam was out--out of the life, out of their broken little family. He had obviously wanted to be out. What could Dean do, in the face of that?

Dean dropped out of school at John's barest suggestion, passing his GED to keep any local do-gooders and truant officers at bay. They spent months in the northeast, and then still more months in the Prairies, and then Maine had swallowed them up in blizzards and ghosts well into the spring.

Dean had bought a miniature cake in a grocery store in Portland (the East coast one, not the West), and two candles--a one and a five--to honor Sam's fifteenth birthday. He made sure to burn them when his father was out getting drunk at the kind of bar that had lobster tanks in the back. Dean had gotten drunk, too, on pilfered Slivovitz and sloppy tears. 

He'd reread the article about Sam's science and tech victory for the hundredth time, and felt ill when the well-worn crease in the pages had started to tear into a hole. The text was so faded where he'd folded it that it was almost illegible, but Dean had memorized it eight towns ago, so that was something. Still, the next time he went into a drug store (one with a lobster tank, because it was the coast of Maine), he'd pooled his change to make a new copy from the printout. He borrowed a pen at the counter to trace over the words he remembered on the fold, and bought himself another year of rereading that way. 

It was something, at least. It wasn't the same as having his baby brother tucked under his arm on the hood of the Impala, safe and near and setting off fireworks into the bright black sky; but it was something.

***

It wasn't until his senior year of highschool that Sam's grades started to slip.

The summer of 2000 had been leaner than usual, and desperation made Sam start to get sloppy about the petty thievery that (along with lost and found bins, food banks, and dumpster diving) had kept him reasonably clothed, fed and in school supplies through the first three years of high school. He'd been sneaking pens and notebooks and potato chips from the bodega unlucky enough to be on the path between the abandoned double-wide he called home and his school for more than a month, trying to stock up for the semester ahead, but he'd only been digging through the dumpster out back when the police officer hollered at him. Still, it was too close to the scene of his crimes, and he'd been too hungry to think straight or run his debate-team-mouth, so he'd panicked and tried to run from the officer, which was never a good look on anyone. Twisting the officer's shoulder out of its socket on instinct when he'd been caught by the hood of his sweatshirt hadn't helped his cause. 

At arraignment, Sam had made up a story of abuse and flight--more believable to the local proles than the truth would have been--and a comparatively soft-hearted family court judge had eventually taken pity on him. Oh, he was registered as a juvenile delinquent, and warned severely that he'd be under close scrutiny from thereon out, but she'd at least gotten him a social worker and greased the way toward getting him set up as an emancipated minor so he could finally get his own work permits and everything else he'd need to be an upstanding citizen at seventeen years old. He was issued a new social security number, a state ID, and a bus pass, and his photo was circulated to the local bodegas and supermarkets, so there'd be no more room to maneuver on the outskirts of the law. But his caseworker set him up with food stamps which wouldn't do shit for school supplies, clothes, soap, toilet paper, or dog food, but would fend off starvation. She gave him the addresses of the shelters that had clothes closets and even tried to coax him into what was more or less a halfway house, but where at least the water heater worked and the electricity wasn't pirated.

Sam had said no without thinking; it didn't allow pets. But because the universe can be cruel, he was back in her office two weeks later, pale as death, saying he'd reconsidered if the offer was still open.

Sam mourned the loss of the Golden Retriever with a week of accidental fasting and fervent prayer to spontaneously die, holding the soft then stiff then soft-again corpse while he rocked and wept. But his prayers went unanswered, and he was forced to bury the now sloughing creature and gather himself back up and survive. He didn't pray anymore, after that. 

Though he drifted through it like a ghost, Sam did settle into the bed the group home offered him relatively well. He even managed, through well-faked sincerity and not-at-all-faked desperation, to secure a job at one of the local coffee shops with a pun for a name, and it had been soothing and empowering, for a while, to be on the right side of the law, to pay for food with money instead of ingenuity.

He still felt sick every time he saw a Golden Retriever on a leash. Though not as sick as he felt when he saw one off the leash, running free or begging in an alley.

But by the time the semester finally started, Sam was somehow inexplicably thinner than he'd been, even though he was eating food with actual nutritional value bought at a real grocery store and quietly taking home everything the coffee shop had told him to dispose of at closing. Something about working full time while living alone-in-a-group, he supposed, was wearing him down at the edges, grinding him away. He started finding pamphlets about overcoming anorexia slipped inside in his locker, at school, and his homeroom teacher (the exceedingly earnest Ms. Bauer) had stopped him in the too-short passing period more than once to "check in," to see how he was doing and beg him to promise to tell her if there was anything he needed. He always promised he would, and never did.

Sam didn't want to be reliant on anyone or anything ever again.

It was a couple of months before the strain of going to school from 8am to 3pm and working from 4pm to 10pm and trying to study from 11pm to 3am via flashlight under a blanket so he didn't wake his roommate really caught up with him. His grades slipped until he fell off of the Dean's list at the close of the first quarter, and he dropped the Math Olympiad, sports, speech, and every other extra-curricular he had collected by Christmas. He'd tried to keep them alive as long as he could, but when forced to choose between working enough hours to afford food and having time for all of the after-school clubs, he'd chosen food. He was too thin not to. There was no more weight left on him to spare, and when he tried skipping more than two meals a day, he was too dizzy to concentrate in class.

Eventually, when he saw stray dogs on the road, he couldn't even manage to spare the crusts of his sandwiches anymore. He stared at his shoes, on the walk to school, hollow-cheeked and hollow-eyed, and tried not to notice the way their tails wagged anyway in his peripheral vision.

Once or twice, Sam thought he saw a big, shiny black landboat cruising along the streets of Flagstaff. He couldn't look up and be sure he wouldn't do something stupid and childish like cry if the men he'd left behind were behind the wheel, or something even stupider and more childish like cry if he looked up and found they weren't. So just in case, he never looked up.

***

When Walter Bernard High School in Flagstaff had its 2001 graduation ceremony, Dean had made up a story about a skinwalker and hit the road. John had picked up a beautiful old truck from Singer Salvage that January, and when the keys to the Impala had been thrown to Dean on his birthday with no more acknowledgment than a gruff, "Treat her well," Dean hadn't been too proud to hug his father tight. He vowed he would, come hell or high water.

The first thing he did when he was alone with her was to peel back the upholstery and stare at the crudely carved SW+DW in the metal below. He touched the "S" with four fingertips and got blind drunk afterwards. At least he treated her to a luxurious detailing the next morning, hungover but earnest.

When June brought graduation announcements to the local papers, he'd naturally assumed he'd find Sam Colt on the Arizona Daily Sun's list of Merit Scholars and scholarship full rides and NCAA college drafts. Failing that, he searched the other fishwrapper papers nearby, and everything else that might cover the school district, or even the state, for mention of his brainy brother. Nothing had jumped out at him. But he'd driven out to Flagstaff anyway, only stopping on the way when the yellow lines in the road had blurred enough that he'd almost lost himself--and the Impala--to an oncoming semi. He'd called the local schools as soon as he'd hit town, and found that his brother would be graduating from the same school he'd started at in 1997, right on schedule. He'd passed through the metal detectors into the football stadium after only three tries.

He couldn't find his brother amidst the crowd of teens on the stage, all dressed in ugly grey gowns with blue tassels. Dean waited in the bleachers impatiently, scanning the kids and keeping an ear up, but Sam wasn't the one announced as valedictorian, or salutatorian, or amongst the Dean's list honorees or merit scholars. He wasn't one of the students with a full ride somewhere being crowed about by the principal or the AP Physics teacher or whoever, and Dean began to seriously wonder if he'd gotten the wrong information somehow. But when they ran through the alphabetical masses, a bone-thin, genderless creature with sallow skin and black circles under its eyes picked up Sam Colt's diploma. 

There was an unkempt rattail of a braid hanging limp down between his shoulder-blades, and he didn't look up when he accepted the folder with his diploma inside, or when he shook hands with the presenter. He filed into the mass of bodies like one more head of cattle, and apart from the stray slap on the shoulder here or there, he didn't fall into any bright and boisterous behavior with the other graduates. There were no leis, no kitschy decorations on his mortarboard, no group photos on plastic disposable cameras. There was little to differentiate him from anyone else, aside from how sharp the bones in his face were, and the scraggly braid. And yet he looked separate and he looked alone, even in the midst of crowd. Maybe especially in the crowd. Just like he always had.

Dean's chest felt somehow aching and hollow at once.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen Sam since Sam had left them (even if he still had trouble wrapping his head around that idea--that Sam had left, all on his own, on purpose). Whenever their paths had taken them through the Southwest, Dean had found some excuse to separate from his father to cruise through Flagstaff, eyes peeled, and while everyone and no one had really looked _for sure_ like Sammy, he'd been convinced enough that he'd got a look at him a couple times. He'd even hunkered down like some kind of creep near the gates to the high school, once, and managed to get one for-sure look at Sam heading in, bright-eyed and shaggy-haired and eager, before a security guard spotted him and he'd had to make a break for it. 

But this was the first time he'd seen Sam looking so... worn.

On the drive in, Dean had changed his mind a dozen times, uncharacteristically, about what he'd do when the graduation was over. He'd slip out unnoticed. He'd go greet Sam, shake his hand, and then they'd go their separate ways. He'd go greet Sam, beat the shit out of him for scaring them so bad, then hug him, and _then_ they'd go their separate ways. He'd kidnap Sam and drag him back. He'd buy Sam an illegal beer and hang out. He'd... Eventually, he'd landed on "I'll know it when I see it," because it let him stop worrying it like a dog with a bone. He'd look at Sam and he'd know the right thing to do.

Only now it turned out he didn't, not any more than he had when he'd started out. He was sure Sam was hurting; he'd seen that same hollow-eyed, world-weary look in the mirror, and on their father, and on a dozen other hunters and victims at least. But Sam was also grown, now, living his own life, and he had a real diploma and real chances. Dean didn't know what the hell he could do that wouldn't risk fucking that all up somehow, however bad he wanted to go buy Sam a burger and just be close to him again.

And there was probably a part of him that hated Sam, just a little, for leaving them. For leaving _Dean._ He didn't look at that part too closely. It wasn't a big enough piece to give him any joy at the sight of Sam like this; it just gnawed at him, a sliver tinged with guilt and self-satisfaction and superiority that came right back around to guilt and self-loathing again. Only a lowlife could begrudge a brilliant kid like Sam a chance at a brighter future. Dean knew what that made him and their dad.

When the families all filed back out of the stadium, Dean trudged back out to the parking lot and climbed into the Impala. He sat with the key in the ignition and told himself to start her up, to leave town. But when an hour had passed and the parking lot was almost empty, he was still sitting there with his hands on the wheel.

***

The minute they were released from the field, Sam stuffed his rented cap and gown into the return bin, got his receipt, and hoofed it to work. He hadn't bothered to ask for the night off, and anyway his manager had the habit of saying things like, "The world keeps turning whether we're ready for it or not" when they asked, so he didn't think it would have been worth the effort. Besides, groceries were low and he'd burned through his tips for the rental fee, and it wasn't like he had anywhere better to be.

Sam watched the scalding steam shoot from the milk steamer, and wondered not for the first time how bad the burns would be if he let his wrist accidentally slip into the stream.

The knowledge that someone helpful would probably force him to go to urgent care and eat up what was left of his paycheck had so far been enough to stop him finding out.

He wasn't sure, in retrospect, why he'd bothered with walking the stage. ("Two pumps, fat free milk, extra shot," sliding the paper cup to the waiting man who didn't look up. No tip.) He'd still get his diploma either way; they'd made that cursorily clear when they'd passed out the forms that asked whether you were renting, buying, or opting out of the cap and gown business. There was no one he needed to see there, no friendships that had really survived him imploding in on himself, no tangible benefit to being there at all. None of the teachers or deans or counselors had pushed him; no one had even realized it was a question.

It was just this nebulous thing, needful and blurred around the edges. Part anger, part pride, part relief that it was ending, part gripping onto the edges of the world with his fingertips while it threatened to slip out from under him. Nothing important. And now he was poorer than he had been before.

Sam let his fingers drift through the ghost of the steam, only warm, now. He missed having something warm to run his fingers through, something soft and warm to sleep up against. Someone who looked happy when he came home, who even cared if he did, apart from the paperwork they'd have to file if he disappeared. 

Sam let the soft underside of his forearm brush against the steel pitcher of milk, where it was still hot enough to scald him red, but suppressed a hiss. If he kept quiet, no one would have to know he'd done it.

***

When the security guard finally rapped on the window and told him he'd have to leave, Dean started the car and eased her out of the lot, but he still hadn't developed a much clearer idea of where he was heading.

He drove a couple of slow laps around the perimeter, wild thumping bass assaulting him at every turn from where the new graduates were clumped around cars or stereos, laughing, drinking, occasionally screwing when they thought they were being clever enough to not get caught. But as far as he could tell, Sam was long gone. Dean was getting ready to just start cruising the various streets he'd thought he'd seen Sam on before or leave town--he hadn't decided which--when he caught sight of a group of boys, absurdly tall, shooting hoops still in their mortarboards, polyester gowns discarded in heaps.

Hoping none of them had cellphones with the cops on speed dial, he risked pulling up alongside the court, dragging himself up to the chain link and hollering out.

"Hey, guys, any you know Sam Colt? On the basketball team?"

One boy picked up his head, signs of recognition. Clear eyes, appraising, but ridiculous hair. Somebody Sam might like. "Maybe," he said, noncommittal, "Who's asking?"

Dean almost floundered. "I--an old friend. We were gonna catch up after the thing," he said vaguely, jerking his thumb in the direction of the stadium, "but I lost track of him, know where he went?"

" _Old_ friend is right," one of the others muttered, and snickering broke out. Little shits.

"Man, he ain't even been on the team this semester," the first boy said, shrugging. "Ya boy dropped out right before a big game, left us in the lurch."

Dean tried not to think _"That sounds about right,"_ but the bile rose in his throat anyway.

Another boy, impatiently dribbling, offered, "Think he's still working at Cafe Au Lait. Can we get back to our game now?"

Gratitude swept through Dean and he tried not to let too much show on his face. "Yeah, thanks, man. Know which street that's on?"

"Canyon. 's the one on the south side of the street," he added, and Dean wondered if the kid thought he'd miss the signs without that kind of direction. Still, he'd been more helpful than the others, so he held back the eyeroll, thanked him again, and got back in the car.

When he got to Canyon, Dean realized what the boy had meant. _Café Olé,_ it turned out to be, with its collection of oversized rust-colored metal art, was on the south side of the street. A sleeker coffee shop sat right across from it, on the north side of the street. Their window-walled fronts looked directly into one another.

Dean sat paralyzed in the Impala for another twenty minutes after he parked down a side-street, out of view from either shop.

In the end, he slouched into the shop on the north side, instead. As long as Sammy stayed behind the counter on the south side, he'd never be able to make Dean out through the glare in the window.

Dean sipped black coffee slow as he could from a stark white mug (he didn't have the cash to keep buying, would need to find some bar to hustle first). He scribbled on a notepad mindlessly, just to have an activity to pretend to be doing, but most of the notes just said "Sam," and by the end of a page he felt like a stalker or a high school girl with a crush. All it needed was a border of hearts. He tore out the page and crumpled it into a tight ball, pocketing it. Maybe he'd burn it later, just to be safe. Some things you just didn't want anyone else to see.

Dean stayed there until closing and was begrudgingly pleased he'd got away with only ordering two cups of coffee and a weird muffin made with some kind of berry he'd never heard of (because they couldn't be normal and carry something like blueberry or chocolate chip). When they finally asked him to leave (getting to be the theme of the day) he circled the block on foot, waiting for the other shop to close, and when it did, for Sam to wipe counters and scrub machines and pack himself up.

He told himself he was just waiting for the hour to get late enough that the really drunk guys would be ready to turn their paychecks over to a pool shark, but part of him knew he was going to follow Sam home, just to know where home was. The bars would still be there when he knew Sam was safe, with a roof over his head, in a place of his own.

***

When Sam woke up the next morning, uncertain why he had to go back in when he'd met all of the requirements but unwilling to do anything to jeopardize that slip of paper that had seemed so precious just a week before, he dressed and wolfed down a couple of the stale muffins he'd brought home in his backpack. He never looked up when he passed the miniscule office, but Don (whom Sam thought of on charitable days as the Nanny, on uncharitable days as the Warden) caught him before he could escape uninterrupted. Sam blinked at him tiredly, muttering something about needing to get to school, but Don held up a suspiciously thick enveloped with "SAM" printed on it in straight block letters, and Sam reluctantly waited for an explanation.

"Anything you want to tell me?" Don asked, instead, and Sam stared.

"About what?" he finally asked, when Don seemed ready to wait him out.

"About why people are dropping off envelopes full of cash for you in the middle of the night," Don clarified, giving Sam what he presumably thought was a very shrewd look, but which came off more constipated in Sam's opinion.

It took a minute for the shock to pass, and then Sam snatched the envelope, opening it and staring numbly at the contents.

"Where did this come from?" he asked, and his surprise must have seemed genuine enough, because Don relaxed visibly and shook his head.

"I was hoping you could tell me, it was just there in the after-hours slot when I checked this morning. Graduation gift?" he asked, shrugging.

"From _who?_ " Sam asked, baffled. He'd burned every bridge he could think of, and this--this was a _lot_ of money. It might even cover the deposit and first month on an apartment... which, given that the grace period on the minors-only home would be winding down too soon for Sam's comfort, would be a very real need before too long.

"Guess you've got a guardian angel," Don said quietly, after a long moment. Sam stared into the envelope, numb, eyes starting to burn and prickle. 

Fuck if he was going to cry in front of Don, though.

"Yeah, I guess. Thanks," he said gruffly (force of biting back the emotion), and slung off his backpack to stuff the envelope into the deepest recesses with shaking hands. He repeated "Thanks" again when his backpack was zipped, and again when he was shoving his way out of the door. He didn't think it was Don he was thanking anymore, by then, though.

**Author's Note:**

> There is another chapter coming, because people other than Sam had plans for his future, too, and a little thing like living the life of an impoverished barista instead of a BAMF hunter isn't going to deter events so long in the works.
> 
> p.s. I'm really sorry about Bones, guys.


End file.
